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Cannonball Problem
In the mathematics of figurate numbers, the cannonball problem asks which numbers are both square and square pyramidal. The problem can be stated as: given a square arrangement of cannonballs, for what size squares can these cannonballs also be arranged into a square pyramid. Equivalently, which squares can be represented as the sum of consecutive squares, starting from 1. Formulation as a Diophantine equation When cannonballs are stacked within a square frame, the number of balls is a square pyramidal number; Thomas Harriot gave a formula for this number around 1587, answering a question posed to him by Sir Walter Raleigh on their expedition to America. Édouard Lucas formulated the cannonball problem as a Diophantine equation :\sum_^ n^2 = M^2 or :\frac N(N+1)(2N+1) = \frac = M^2. Solution Lucas conjectured that the only solutions are ''N'' = 1, ''M'' = 1, and ''N'' = 24, ''M'' = 70, using either 1 or 4900 cannon balls. It was not until 1918 that G. N. Watson found a proof fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rye Castle, Rye, East Sussex, England-6April2011 (1)
Rye (''Secale cereale'') is a grass grown extensively as a grain, a cover crop and a forage crop. It is a member of the wheat tribe (Triticeae) and is closely related to both wheat (''Triticum'') and barley (genus ''Hordeum''). Rye grain is used for flour, bread, beer, crispbread, some whiskeys, some vodkas, and animal fodder. It can also be eaten whole, either as boiled rye berries or by being rolled, similar to rolled oats. Rye is a cereal grain and should not be confused with ryegrass, which is used for lawns, pasture, and as hay for livestock. Distribution and habitat Rye is one of a number of species that grow wild in the Levant, central and eastern Turkey and in adjacent areas. Evidence uncovered at the Epipalaeolithic site of Tell Abu Hureyra in the Euphrates valley of northern Syria suggests that rye was among the first cereal crops to be systematically cultivated, around 13,000 years ago. However, that claim remains controversial; critics point to inco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Mathematical Monthly
''The American Mathematical Monthly'' is a mathematical journal founded by Benjamin Finkel in 1894. It is published ten times each year by Taylor & Francis for the Mathematical Association of America. The ''American Mathematical Monthly'' is an expository journal intended for a wide audience of mathematicians, from undergraduate students to research professionals. Articles are chosen on the basis of their broad interest and reviewed and edited for quality of exposition as well as content. In this the ''American Mathematical Monthly'' fulfills a different role from that of typical mathematical research journals. The ''American Mathematical Monthly'' is the most widely read mathematics journal in the world according to records on JSTOR. Tables of contents with article abstracts from 1997–2010 are availablonline The MAA gives the Lester R. Ford Awards annually to "authors of articles of expository excellence" published in the ''American Mathematical Monthly''. Editors *2022� ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Close-packing Of Equal Spheres
In geometry, close-packing of equal spheres is a dense arrangement of congruent spheres in an infinite, regular arrangement (or lattice). Carl Friedrich Gauss proved that the highest average density – that is, the greatest fraction of space occupied by spheres – that can be achieved by a lattice packing is :\frac \approx 0.74048. The same packing density can also be achieved by alternate stackings of the same close-packed planes of spheres, including structures that are aperiodic in the stacking direction. The Kepler conjecture states that this is the highest density that can be achieved by any arrangement of spheres, either regular or irregular. This conjecture was proven by T. C. Hales. Highest density is known only for 1, 2, 3, 8, and 24 dimensions. Many crystal structures are based on a close-packing of a single kind of atom, or a close-packing of large ions with smaller ions filling the spaces between them. The cubic and hexagonal arrangements are very close to one anoth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sixth Power
In arithmetic and algebra the sixth power of a number ''n'' is the result of multiplying six instances of ''n'' together. So: :. Sixth powers can be formed by multiplying a number by its fifth power, multiplying the square of a number by its fourth power, by cubing a square, or by squaring a cube. The sequence of sixth powers of integers is: :0, 1, 64, 729, 4096, 15625, 46656, 117649, 262144, 531441, 1000000, 1771561, 2985984, 4826809, 7529536, 11390625, 16777216, 24137569, 34012224, 47045881, 64000000, 85766121, 113379904, 148035889, 191102976, 244140625, 308915776, 387420489, 481890304, ... They include the significant decimal numbers 106 (a million), 1006 (a short-scale trillion and long-scale billion), 10006 (a long-scale trillion) and so on. Squares and cubes The sixth powers of integers can be characterized as the numbers that are simultaneously squares and cubes. In this way, they are analogous to two other classes of figurate numbers: the square triangular numbers, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Square Triangular Number
In mathematics, a square triangular number (or triangular square number) is a number which is both a triangular number and a perfect square. There are infinitely many square triangular numbers; the first few are: :0, 1, 36, , , , , , , Explicit formulas Write for the th square triangular number, and write and for the sides of the corresponding square and triangle, so that :N_k = s_k^2 = \frac. Define the ''triangular root'' of a triangular number to be . From this definition and the quadratic formula, :n = \frac. Therefore, is triangular ( is an integer) if and only if is square. Consequently, a square number is also triangular if and only if is square, that is, there are numbers and such that . This is an instance of the Pell equation with . All Pell equations have the trivial solution for any ; this is called the zeroth solution, and indexed as . If denotes the th nontrivial solution to any Pell equation for a particular , it can be shown by the method of desc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tetrahedral Number
A tetrahedral number, or triangular pyramidal number, is a figurate number that represents a pyramid with a triangular base and three sides, called a tetrahedron. The th tetrahedral number, , is the sum of the first triangular numbers, that is, : Te_n = \sum_^n T_k = \sum_^n \frac = \sum_^n \left(\sum_^k i\right) The tetrahedral numbers are: : 1, 4, 10, 20, 35, 56, 84, 120, 165, 220, ... Formula The formula for the th tetrahedral number is represented by the 3rd rising factorial of divided by the factorial of 3: :Te_n= \sum_^n T_k = \sum_^n \frac = \sum_^n \left(\sum_^k i\right)=\frac = \frac The tetrahedral numbers can also be represented as binomial coefficients: :Te_n=\binom. Tetrahedral numbers can therefore be found in the fourth position either from left or right in Pascal's triangle. Proofs of formula This proof uses the fact that the th triangular number is given by :T_n=\frac. It proceeds by induction. ;Base case :Te_1 = 1 = \frac. ;Inductive step :\ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Triangular Number
A triangular number or triangle number counts objects arranged in an equilateral triangle. Triangular numbers are a type of figurate number, other examples being square numbers and cube numbers. The th triangular number is the number of dots in the triangular arrangement with dots on each side, and is equal to the sum of the natural numbers from 1 to . The sequence of triangular numbers, starting with the 0th triangular number, is (This sequence is included in the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences .) Formula The triangular numbers are given by the following explicit formulas: T_n= \sum_^n k = 1+2+3+ \dotsb +n = \frac = , where \textstyle is a binomial coefficient. It represents the number of distinct pairs that can be selected from objects, and it is read aloud as " plus one choose two". The first equation can be illustrated using a visual proof. For every triangular number T_n, imagine a "half-square" arrangement of objects corresponding to the triangular n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Squaring The Square
Squaring the square is the problem of tiling an integral square using only other integral squares. (An integral square is a square whose sides have integer length.) The name was coined in a humorous analogy with squaring the circle. Squaring the square is an easy task unless additional conditions are set. The most studied restriction is that the squaring be perfect, meaning the sizes of the smaller squares are all different. A related problem is squaring the plane, which can be done even with the restriction that each natural number occurs exactly once as a size of a square in the tiling. The order of a squared square is its number of constituent squares. Perfect squared squares A "perfect" squared square is a square such that each of the smaller squares has a different size. It is first recorded as being studied by R. L. Brooks, C. A. B. Smith, A. H. Stone and W. T. Tutte at Cambridge University between 1936 and 1938. They transformed the square tiling into an equivalent e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bosonic String Theory
Bosonic string theory is the original version of string theory, developed in the late 1960s and named after Satyendra Nath Bose. It is so called because it contains only bosons in the spectrum. In the 1980s, supersymmetry was discovered in the context of string theory, and a new version of string theory called superstring theory (supersymmetric string theory) became the real focus. Nevertheless, bosonic string theory remains a very useful model to understand many general features of perturbative string theory, and many theoretical difficulties of superstrings can actually already be found in the context of bosonic strings. Problems Although bosonic string theory has many attractive features, it falls short as a viable physical model in two significant areas. First, it predicts only the existence of bosons whereas many physical particles are fermions. Second, it predicts the existence of a mode of the string with imaginary mass, implying that the theory has an instability to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leech Lattice
In mathematics, the Leech lattice is an even unimodular lattice Λ24 in 24-dimensional Euclidean space, which is one of the best models for the kissing number problem. It was discovered by . It may also have been discovered (but not published) by Ernst Witt in 1940. Characterization The Leech lattice Λ24 is the unique lattice in 24-dimensional Euclidean space, E24, with the following list of properties: *It is unimodular; i.e., it can be generated by the columns of a certain 24×24 matrix with determinant 1. *It is even; i.e., the square of the length of each vector in Λ24 is an even integer. *The length of every non-zero vector in Λ24 is at least 2. The last condition is equivalent to the condition that unit balls centered at the points of Λ24 do not overlap. Each is tangent to 196,560 neighbors, and this is known to be the largest number of non-overlapping 24-dimensional unit balls that can simultaneously touch a single unit ball. This arrangement of 196,560 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elementary Proof
In mathematics, an elementary proof is a mathematical proof that only uses basic techniques. More specifically, the term is used in number theory to refer to proofs that make no use of complex analysis. Historically, it was once thought that certain theorems, like the prime number theorem, could only be proved by invoking "higher" mathematical theorems or techniques. However, as time progresses, many of these results have also been subsequently reproven using only elementary techniques. While there is generally no consensus as to what counts as elementary, the term is nevertheless a common part of the mathematical jargon. An elementary proof is not necessarily simple, in the sense of being easy to understand or trivial. In fact, some elementary proofs can be quite complicated — and this is especially true when a statement of notable importance is involved.. Prime number theorem The distinction between elementary and non-elementary proofs has been considered especially important i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Figurate Number
The term figurate number is used by different writers for members of different sets of numbers, generalizing from triangular numbers to different shapes (polygonal numbers) and different dimensions (polyhedral numbers). The term can mean * polygonal number * a number represented as a discrete -dimensional regular geometric pattern of -dimensional balls such as a polygonal number (for ) or a polyhedral number (for ). * a member of the subset of the sets above containing only triangular numbers, pyramidal numbers, and their analogs in other dimensions. Terminology Some kinds of figurate number were discussed in the 16th and 17th centuries under the name "figural number". In historical works about Greek mathematics the preferred term used to be ''figured number''. In a use going back to Jacob Bernoulli's Ars Conjectandi, the term ''figurate number'' is used for triangular numbers made up of successive integers, tetrahedral numbers made up of successive triangular numbers, e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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